General Question

Does anybody know, or have an idea, of what really happened on 9/11?

I know that it is the saddest day in US history, and a lot of people died. But I think that not figuring out how it all happened and what exactly did happen would disgrace them. I’m not saying revenge, but discovering the truth.
I’m only thirteen and don’t know that much about it, but know enough to know that it is fishy and people are lying; most likely the government.
First, why did fighter planes not intercept and stop the terrorists? I heard the people who should have done that were ordered to stand down on that particular day. Who ordered them to stand down and why did they do it? They could have saved a lot of lives!
Then, the buildings would not have fallen like a demolition from a plane crash. No other building in history has fallen like that because of a plane crash, right? It was a steel building; it would have stood, wouldn’t it have? And I think building #7 fell like that, too. Somebody set it up.
I’m not so sure about this last one, but didn’t we go to war with Iraq right after? I thought the terrorists weren’t from there.
What’s your viewpoint and can do you know what did or might have happened on 9/11?

17 Answers

9/11 happened but the defense force were caught extremely offguard and should have done better, the world was a different place back then and we were not so paranoid and cautious as we are now.

The initial war was against Osama Bin Laden, the taliban and Al-Qaeda who were major influences based in Afghanistan, years later the War on Iraq started because we thought their leader Saddam Hussein (now executed) was holding nuclear weapons but that turned out to be a lie and an illegal war.

Its really a complicated situation. It would take many hours and pages to explain what happened and who was really involved. There is a website that tells all the answers to your questions. If you can believe it.

A group of anti-Western terrorists, mostly from Syria, hijacked jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One other plane was secured by passengers aboard and crashed in a field. Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility. That’s what really happened.

Don’t believe the conspiracy theories here.
The Government got caught unexpected by a 19 terrorists, who were supported by Osama bin Laden.
The Government knew about the terrorists taking flying lessons, but didn’t do much to find out why they were doing it. Yes, they were that stupid.
Don’t mistake stupidity for conspiracy.

9/11 was not the saddest day in American history. A lot more people died in World War II.

And it’s really not that complicated. Terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed three of them into buildings. Osama bin Laden brags about this in a video. It was a brilliant plan on al-Qaeda’s part and a lucky shot.

Fighter planes didn’t intercept the passenger planes because fighter planes are not magic spells from Harry Potter. Passenger jets fly over New York and Washington all the time without triggering the Air Force to scramble fighter jets. And those jets take time to get off the ground to begin with.

The buildings fell because the explosions melted their support structure. Popular Mechanics has the run down. You say “no other building has fallen like that from a plane crash” ... well, no other buildings have had jumbo jets with full fuel crash into them.

And yes, we did go to war with Iraq. But before that we went to war with Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was hiding at the time. Remember that? (You were 3, so I’ll forgive you if you don’t.) If you’re suggesting that Bush blew up buildings and killed 3,000 people to begin a war with Iraq which he then preceded to horribly bungle, you are suggesting something which is not remotely consistent.

I’ll be frank with you. I can see the appeal of believing in conspiracy theories. It makes you feel cool. Like you have some kind of secret knowledge that the “masses” don’t possess. It’s like the Matrix, right? But the problem here is that what you are suggesting makes no fucking sense.

Another problem is that you aren’t actually suggesting anything yourself, you’re just parroting what you’ve heard from a 9/11 truther—which doesn’t bode well for your critical thinking skills.

Nobody is lying, what is more likely is perhaps people just aren’t telling everything, which, to me, makes perfect sense. The American people are rabid enough without knowing everything.

As @Qingu said, though, and I think this is important to note, as you may have forgotten, America went to war in Afghanistan first. 9/11 was not some conspiracy to take down Hussein or Iraq and their “nuclear weapons”, it was merely an attack by a group of extremists on American soil blown entirely out of proportion. The US went to Afghanistan to try and sort out the problem caused by 9/11, and then went to Iraq for some godforsaken reasoning that is lost to me. The government didn’t kill 3,000 people on 9/11, and neither did Bush. Fluther is generally a pretty liberal and often kooky place when it comes to politics, but I know we’re all reasonable enough to know that 9/11 conspiracy theories have little to no basis in fact, regardless of what political party we support or what we choose to read on the topic.

It’s certainly true that Bush leveraged 9/11 to gain support for his war in Iraq.

But there’s a huge difference between saying that and saying Bush planned 9/11 to go to war in Iraq. One important difference between the two statements is that only one of them makes the least bit of sense.

Facepalm It wasn’t a conspiracy kid. Sure someone may say that jet fuel isn’t hot enough to melt steel or something of the sort but this is what I’m going to focus on. jet fuel may not burn hot enough to melt steel but neither does your average home fire. Many homes around where I live (the newer houses) are built using a lot of steel. this steel gets very hot in the fire which makes it increasingly weak to the point it gasps collapses. Now sure, the steel used in skyscrapers is superior to that used in houses, but jet fuel also burns significantly hotter than your average house fire, wild fire, etc. Note: jet fuel burns at 1,500–1,800 degrees F and conspiracy theorists will say it’s not hot enough to melt steel which melts at around 2,777 degrees F. HOWEVER, at temperatures exceeding roughly 1,300 degrees F steel retains only 10% of it’s strength. And then you got to remember the force at which the towers would have been hit by the planes which would have also weakened the strength of the steel in the tower. Don’t chalk this up to conspiracy, please don’t. It’s disrespectful to the dead especially when it’s not a conspiracy.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are some details of personal incompetence within the government that were covered up by people in power. Having said that, I’m completely confident in my belief that that people in the government weren’t responsible for the attacks themselves, although they may have been prevented if people had done their jobs better. There were documented and undeniable failures with communication between intelligence agencies and the FBI for example.

What really happened is well known and well documented. Don’t waste your time mulling over insane conspiracy theories. So yes, the informed world community has a good idea of what really happened. Not every tiny detail but all the important parts. Just check out the links here

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names.” Wanting to know the truth about things is a pretty natural thing to feel, and for some an important part of their calling in life. Interestingly, there is often no feeling of “wanting to know the truth,” unless one suspects that what is being passed off as the truth isn’t true. As long as there’s no reason in your mind to ask questions, there’s no feeling of needing to know the truth.

Here’s another quote I like from astronaut Neil Armstrong: “There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth’s protective layers. There are many places to go beyond belief.”

Personally, I will take a terrible truth over a placating lie any day of the week. It’s often the only way I can feel content. And in my personal experience, accepting terrible truths has freed my mind and spirit to seek and follow the things that make me feel blissful. If there are big things in the world that are broken on purpose, then I don’t need to be virtuous and try to fix them, when I would do just as well (or better) to take care of myself instead of sacrificing my interests for some greater good that is all but unfixable. Many, many other people can’t function this way. I’ve seen it happen many times. If they are challenged by something like what you are suggesting in your question, they simply cannot entertain the thought, because it would wreck their system of belief. It would take away their sense of hope and meaning in the world and feeling that way can be very painful.

Here’s something else I’ve learned… other than for your own sense of satisfaction or conviction, it (in one sense) doesn’t really matter what you believe. Suppose you learn “the truth” about 9/11? How will it change anything other than how you see the world and respond to it? Will it undo 9/11? Will it undo the violence that has been committed since? Will it undo the changes in our culture and our changing relationship to government? There are many people who “know the truth” about 9/11 and have for years now, but has that created change?

At the same time, your belief does matter on a different level. Let’s say you learn enough to “know the truth” about 9/11. Let’s say that “knowing the truth” leads you to believe that there are forces in the world beyond your control that commit evil conspiracies. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call that “bad magic.” If you came to that conclusion, would that be the end of the story or would you go further and imagine that if there’s bad magic in the world there must be “good magic” as well. Coming to that kind of conclusion sort of turns you into someone who is now on the lookout for evidence of good magic—a kind of person that you probably cannot become if you are not first given cause to feel that what is being passed off as the truth is a lie. If you grow up Christian, for example, believe you are born a sinner and that your only redemption is through God or Jesus, and you never question this, then you will likely never entertain the belief that you already have divinity inside you and then seek to understand that divinity. Only a person who would stop to ask the question would reach for that kind of conclusion.

Here’s something else to consider. Let’s suppose it’s safe to say that we now live in a highly connected world and that as a result it’s very difficult to keep secrets. Way more difficult that ever before. If you are trying to hide the truth, how do you keep it a secret? How do you keep it a secret if someone figures out the truth and starts telling everyone, or if the secret is something that happens in broad daylight? One answer is to flood people’s minds (or flood the Internet, TV, radio, etc.) with lies, half-truths, distortions and “junk thoughts” (like junk food, maybe). So your brain becomes full, but not of the truth that is being hidden.

If you follow this question (the one about 9/11) to the end of the earth, you can literally spend years of your life sifting through the information, which actually will help your critical thinking skills (and shame on those folks who are chiding you for asking questions about what you’ve heard). In the end, not much will change except you as a person. If it’s necessary for you to pursue it, you will regardless of what other people say. If it isn’t, you will be persuaded by the statements above. There are plenty of other questions in this world to follow and they all yield truths as well, so choose what interests you and what you think will lead you to greater understanding or bliss or truth with a capital “T” if such a thing exists.

They have already showed how each of those buildings came down the way that they did. They even did a demonstration on tv how burning jet fuel caused the steel beams to buckle after a short time. I have read about many counterarguments from ‘truthers’ but with so many different conspiracy theories floating around out there I have to ask which one do I believe.

I’m always open to anything being possible but until I see enough evidence to convince me otherwise I’ll go with what I believe was a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. Trust me, there were much better ways that the government could have came up with to stage a terrorist attack if they had a reason to. In fact it was extremely risky to even consider hijacking jets with box cutters and one of the jets didn’t even make it to their destination because the passengers fought back.

The problem that I have with many conspiracy theories is that they tend to take biased and unfair shots at people. Sometimes the people behind them take shots at entire groups of people to justify their own hatred/mistrust of others. Conspiracy theories can turn any person into the next antichrist like they did with Obama and with fanatical people believing this nonsense this makes many of them (conspiracy theories) potentially very dangerous.

While some worry about unrealistic government conspiracies the government is actually eroding freedoms that have existed for hundreds of years through the indefinite detention provision. Are these crazy ‘conspiracy theories’ a government conspiracy themselves to distract people from what is really happening?